the mountains look to realistic for a parchment looking map. they look weird (i agree with Andy)sorry if i'm wrong, but wasn't it Austrio-Hungary?do the world an imperial powers start off neutral? i think they should if they don't...i find it odd how there's huge territories (Siberia and French West Africa) and small territories (Portugal) I know its not important, i just thought i'd say it... i like the idea though. its kinda like New Worlds, same idea, but different... good job so far.

rocky mountain wrote:sorry if i'm wrong, but wasn't it Austrio-Hungary?

It would be appropriate to call the area either Austria-Hungary or the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

rocky mountain wrote:do the world an imperial powers start off neutral? i think they should if they don't...

If they're going to get the +1 bonus I would lean toward starting them neutral, so nobody starts with an unfair advantage.

rocky mountain wrote:i find it odd how there's huge territories (Siberia and French West Africa) and small territories (Portugal) I know its not important, i just thought i'd say it...

Yep... again, that concern will keep coming up until long after it is quenched. This is a geopolitical map, and as such the political and economic importance of a region outweighs the geographical size. Tiny Portugal had more influence on the world in 1910 than all of Siberia, but I recognize that it would screw up gameplay to make all of eastern Russia one big territory.

I've been looking at a lot of old maps (it's this thing I do) and this is a fairly common way to represent mountains on maps through the 19th and early 20th centuries - when advances in printing were made and mapmakers stopped using the little pointy line-art mountains that we have come to knwo and love on CC maps. I hope that as I work out the other visual elements I can convince you that they work.

What do you think of adding Sierra Leone to Africa, just northwest of Liberia? It was a British colony (seems like there are a lot of those) and was being extolled as a home for freed British slaves (similarly to Liberia for Americans). It'll keep Liberia from being a deadend, and give you 66 territories. That cuts down the neutrals in 2, 3 and 6 player games (by 2, 2 and 5) and adds 1 to the others (up to 2 in 4- and 8-player, 1 in 5-player and 4 in 7-player). It also moves 2 and 3 players games up from 21 territories to start, which is an annoying number for anyone not playing first.

Gameplay-wise, I am concerned about Europe and Africa. Auto-deploys and bombardements work on the Berlin map, as those territories are evenly spaced, but here they're all clustered together.

It bothers me that South Africa requires you to defend 7 out of 9 territories. I know you wanted to balance the bottleneck, but I'm not convinced that was the right way to do it.

My random suggestion is to add the 'East of India Tea Company' as an ocean fleet with connections to India, South Africa and Britain. (You could put an auto-decay on it to represent men lost at sea - the perils of ocean travel!) This way you would eliminate the clustering of autodeploys/bombardments, and open up S Africa a little.

OK, the current set-up was an over-reaction to the concern about making Europe stronger. I always vote for classic gameplay, yet I like the colonies... I think there's a happy medium in there somewhere, but I won't have time to try to find it until next week.

I like the idea of giving the European imperialist countries some benefit other than the standard additional army. In fact, I'd rather dump the auto-deployed armies altogether, as they have differing values depending on the game type... in adjacent forts game they are all but useless, while in no-cards games with unlimited forts they are keys to victory.

Benn's idea of adding a sea-going element to the game is intriguing... if you control the seas you control trade, and if you control trade you can exert influence over your colonies. Something to think about.

Oh, and MrBenn holds the Gameplay stamp for this map - I should do what he wants!

Alright, I lied - I did find time to work on this. It was bothering me too much.

I've rolled with MrBenn's idea of adding something along the lines of the old East India Trading Company. Now to whallop one of the colonies, a European player must first take a killer neutral trading company... killer neutral because the government doesn't actually own the trading co, though they had a great deal of influence on them. And the trading companies still can't actually invade and conquer, they can only knock out the colonies. I'm not really thinking that the trading companies need any more than a 3 neutral value - they are already dead ends, as they can only bombard and are lost each round, so using them will mean expending some serious resources.

Here's my rationale behind this, though I'm sure somebody will present an excellent counter-argument and it will all change by Monday: early feedback on this map suggested that Europe should hold some kind of value or have some kind of power above and beyond those of the rest of the world, because it is in Europe that the imperial powers of the day were centered. This map is intended to represent the gradual decay of those empires - they should still be able to exert influence over their colonies, but direct control is slipping away. And influence was generally exerted through an intermediary - the Trading Co's. I think that this set-up reflects Europe's ability to affect the world, if not entirely control it.

Could play become frustrating for the player who holds the colonies? Yes; to which I say welcome to the real world, sweetie pie. It sucked to be an African or Indian prince in 1910, because no matter how hot your shit was there was little chance of securing your homeland for your people for very long.

Ultimately we'll have to play with the bonuses for the regions that can be bombarded - make it worth somebody's while to go after Africa and Southeast Asia.

In other news, I removed the French flag from north africa, since France already has an attack route there.

I've also taken out the capital bonuses for now... I can really go either way on this one, and I think that giving the European powers a bonus in addition to their trading company powers is enough. This means the capitals don't need to start neutral. I also need to recount the territories now that I've added the ships.

And nobody can attack a trading co other than the home territory - it would never make sense to since they revert to neutral anyway.

Mountains - I'll deal with that later. Let's figure out how to play this.

i like it now. its good that the trading co. go back to neutral. i also like how its just bombard, not attack, because if it was just attack, the person in England would be at a huge advantage. not so with bombarding.i think the russian empire should be 7, not 8i also think the middle east should be 2, because it has 4 terits with 3 defending... myabe not......why is it "1920-" without anything after it?I like this map...

Oaktown...sorry if i have come in late on this one....great looking map....but where are the Dutch.Are you not going to have Indonesia as being Dutch and some parts of Africa also....or is that after 1910???

the trading companies look last minute and impracticable. access is all bunched up in Europe meaning only one play will likely put them to use. this geared for lopsided play, which you say reflects reality, but doesn't make for a very good gaming experience.

Great map, love the idea of the killer neutral ships. I dont know if you igneored this for playability reasons, but Germany had a colony on New Guinea until WW1, when Australia captured it. This might work if you remove the british link with new zealand in favour for the german link to new guinea.

You might also want to rename the chinese empire to Qing dynasty, but that collapsed in 1912 so chinese empire works also.

sorry ... haven't read anything in this topic yet ... but the map looks good, only that in 1910 Australia had been federated (from 1901) and was no longer a colony of britain, though we did still shine thier boots for a long time remaining a "dominion" of britain or something of the sorts - meaning the boots we lick are still the queens ... but these have/had no official/practical bearing after federation.